Hobby Kingdom Technology Plan
Hobby Kingdom is based on a dream. A dream for a place to exist where gaming is cool, where gamers can get what they want at a great price, a place to play, a place to talk games. Most of all, it is a dream to build a place where gamers can foster meaningful community.
Years of planning went into HK before we opened our doors Dec 9 2006. Since that time, we have been overwhelming encouraged by your response to our implementation of this dream. Thank you for joining us in this most excellent adventure.
We believe you are royalty, so we refer to you as lords and ladies. Our staff are here to serve you, whether it is gaming needs or you just want to hang out and chat.
Almost every week we ask questions on how we can improve and make things just a little bit better. We appreciate every response we receive, the answers are always thoughtful and genuine. Some of these suggestions require more work than is apparent, some need to be shaped to fit within the whole experience. Perhaps you find yourself wondering: what are they up to?
We want to take this moment to tip our hand and show you a glimpse of our future technology plans to realize our dream. We do this to keep the dialogue open as we travel, together, down this path.
Our broad strokes plan has six phases to it:
- Special Ordering
- Unify the Retail Store and Website
- Revamp the HK Newsletter
- Forums
- Website Redesign
- Web 2.0
1. Special Ordering
Special orders are a critical component to meeting your needs. The gaming industry is vast. It is impossible to have everything under one roof. Special orders allow us to bring in the specialized products you want that may not fit on the shelf.
Everyone has experienced this before: you place an order at your local hobby store. A month goes by and you don’t hear anything. You go into the store for something else and there is your product sitting innocently on the shelf available for just anyone to snatch up.
To ensure this never happens at Hobby Kingdom, we just installed a new module to our store software built specifically for gaming special orders. This software module is valued around $10,000 - $20,000 (we have friends in high places).
Without going into too much detail, the system provides complete visibility you as your order goes through 5 phases of processing. Our staff enter your special order and you will be automatically emailed everything we recorded. As our purchasing department locates, orders, receives, and prep the product you will be automatically emailed. The system tracks your communication preference, whether you want to be notified by email, phone, cell, or soon to be SMS messaging.
When you visit the store and purchase something, our staff are alerted to any of your outstanding special orders and can provide a detailed explanation of its status.
This system went live on Tuesday Aug 28 and there may be a few kinks to work out, but over all it is already making our staff much more efficient. After all, every order is special to us.
2. Website and Store Unification
Hobby Kingdom runs a specialized software program built for the 21st century hobby store. It integrates with the website shopping engine to create a single holistic customer experience. A customer account created in the store can be used online to place special orders. Points earned online through web orders can be redeemed in store. Orders can be placed online to be picked up in store. And much much more. Even Futureshop and Chapters don’t have this level of sophistication in their systems.
Unfortunately, due to some technical hurdles and resource shortages, we never implemented the connection between the two systems. This became a bottleneck to future expansion of the website features. The website sat relatively dormant.
We are happy to report, after 8 months of wanting to do this, we got the two systems up and running Thursday Aug 29.
You won’t notice much different in the short term as there is a mountain of data for us to clean up and work through. However, the changes will become more apparent as time goes on.
The first tangible benefits of this systems integration is allowing you full access to our entire store catalogue and inventory. Secondly, you will be able to monitor special orders online and make modifications to them.
For all this to work you need to use a single customer account per person. We are working on a way for you to authenticate yourself online so you don’t double enter your information. More information on this will be coming in the next couple of weeks.
3. Revamp the HK Newsletter
We believe information and communication are good. As long as it is relevant and meaningful.
We implemented a weekly newsletter to keep you up to date on changes within Hobby Kingdom, events, and new products.
The challenge we face is ensuring the information is relevant to a diverse group of gamers.
Our new newsletter will still be weekly, but it will be more personalized. It will be about the topics YOU are interested in. You will be able to control the content in the newsletter. Some of the content will be user generated, not just staff generated.
The newsletter also represents a major paradigm shift. In the near future it will no longer contain detailed information but a brief overview of information available online.
And yes, it will have a new look that is much more professional. It will also work with both HTML and Text Only email clients.
Shorter. Personalized. Relevant. This is where we are headed.
4. Forums
Probably the most requested improvement to our web presence, forums represent a way to interact with other gamers around the games you love.
We are being very careful about how we implement this feature. It has been in our minds since day 1. It hasn’t been until now that we are confident our forums will be a valuable core to a larger gaming community.
- What if you could meet other gamers of similar interest and play a role playing game or a board game on a Friday night?
- What if you get free experience points and earn in store credit just for posting?
- What if you could initiate challenges within your league play?
- What if you could discuss the latest installment of your RPG privately with other members of the group?
These are just some of the ideas we will be implementing.
5. Website Redesign
Love it or hate it, our website is certainly unique!
We’ve received a lot of feedback about our website since we opened. A predominant criticism is “I don’t get it”. Those that do “get it” love it and are impressed with the effort we put into it.
As we prepare for more people and more kinds of gamers, we will be doing a serious revamp of our website.
The new mantra is: Fast. Intuitive. Fun. An experience.
The world doesn’t need another Amazon clone. Boring! Our new website will take advantage of the latest developments in web technologies, just wait till you see what we can do with Ajax and DHTML!
Our website will still be themed but will feature new illustrations by our very talented Alex Lin (the same guy who did the murals in the game rooms and the flash animation on our plasma).
6. Web 2.0
With all the above implemented, we will now have a launching pad to unleash new levels of service and interaction.
- Chatting in a forum about playing a game of Descent? Book a date, time, and game room, immediately, online. Receive automatic reminders a few days before game day.
- Looking for a D&D game to play? Search our online community calendar of games and registered groups, both in our store and outside of it.
- Want to see the standings of your wargame league? Check the real-time stats, game outcomes, and rankings online.
- Feel like playing Axis and Allies? See who else is playing it in the near future and join in.
Conclusion
Hyper-local. Hyper-relevant. Intuitive. Useful. This is the future path of Hobby Kingdom’s technology. We don’t want to be just any hobby store, we want to be YOUR hobby store.
So what do you think? Will you join us for it? We can guarantee it’s going to be a wild ride!
In the emperor’s service,
The Steward
Until we get the forums up, if you would like to dialog about anything stated here send an email to
The Steward